Truth

The truth is, we are all a little bit crazy, not just those of us who love dead children, who talk to them every day and wonder, for an eternity, why?

Truth is, sometimes we lose people not through death but through separation, through silences. Friends will not always stay -- and how I wish someone had told me that long ago, when I thought a friend was a friend for life. Experience taught me otherwise, painfully and slowly, and it's a lesson I am still trying to reconcile with my life experience. So many friends who disappeared, or cut me off, or drifted away. Friends I cut off, ran away from. People I never had a chance to tell goodbye, or people who said goodbye to me when I wasn't ready. Those I wanted, needed, to say goodbye to, but didn't have words gentle enough to do the job. Friends I no longer know if I can count on, the silences have been so great between us, are so great between us.

Truth is, others will die, others who may have long forgotten us, but meant a great deal to us once upon a time. Who changed our lives, briefly but permanently. Who we thought would be with us forever.

The world is so vast, and yet so small. Today I am thinking of several people I thought would be with me forever: one is gone, one is somewhere in between friend and stranger, and another is . . . I just don't know.

Truth is, the spaces in between us are sometimes all there is.